Ghana has moved beyond slogans - Government

Government of Ghana has reacted to the statement delivered by Professor Philip Aston, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Humans that politicians in Ghana are champions of slogans but are not good at programmes which can significantly benefit the country’s economy or the lives of its citizens.

Addressing the press today [Thursday], Minister of Information, Dr Mustapha Hamid, said the report by the UN representative is coming at a time when programmes of social protection have been given high priority status.

The minister told journalists that ‘’the budget for social protection shot up by 300 percent last year, the highest ever on record under any government in Ghana since independence.’’

Professor Alston indicated that the one district, one factory and one village, one dam, although attractive on the surface, achieve very little in principle. But reacting to the statements, the Information Minister said farmers in the three Northern regions, in particular, are seeing a significant increase in their incomes since the introduction of the planting for jobs programme.’’

He said government has reduced the cost of fertilizer by a massive 50 percent and on top of halving the cost, farmers are not asked to pay first hand; moreover they are given the option paying with their produce rather than cash after harvesting.’’

The one-village-one dam which will take off this year, is another poverty alleviation policy to enable farmers in three regions of the north to engage in all year agriculture.’’

He also described as inaccurate as inaccurate claims by the professor that ‘’informed estimates that existing taxes yield less than 10 percent of their potential because of exemptions that have been included to satisfy special interest,’’ adding ‘’this is inaccurate.

In 2017, we missed our revenues target by only 4 per cent. While this may not be exactly good news, because we need to collect the maximum tax projections, it nonetheless shows that his ‘’informed estimates’’ are not exactly informed.’’

He was optimistic that the policies by government will see marked improvement in the lives of poor communities of our country, that hopefully will help bridge the gap between the wealthy and the poor…So we have moved beyond mere sloganeering to actual implementation of programmes that are physically visible on the ground.’’